Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts

Recently, I have been looking for ways to make my Internet browsing more effective. One of the ways to increase your productivity is to use keyboard shortcuts. If you've seen my tutorial on how to Open Links Faster, you know how useful they can be. Well as I was looking for things to talk about on Talk Tech with CTI I stumbled across this article about Firefox keyboard shortcuts. We even talked about a couple of the ones I saw on this page on the radio show. So far the one that has impressed me the most was Ctrl+Shift+T. If you accidentally close a tab it will reopen it for you. Pretty cool really, give some of these shortcuts a shot.

Open Links Faster

Just in case you hadn't noticed it I posted a new tutorial. This one shows how to use ctrl + click and Shift + click to speed your internet searching. Once you get to using this shortcut it will save you time. No more clicking on a search link and then the back button. Just click back to the tab that had the original search results. For those that don't use tabs this is a great example of how useful they are. These shortcuts work in Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox. Check out my tutorial here.

Try Silverlight

If you've been to any Microsoft web site lately you might have noticed it asking you to install Silverlight. Taken from the Microsoft Silverlight page this is how they describe the browser plug-in.

Microsoft Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.

Basically, it is meant to be similar to Adobe Flash. The big difference is that Microsoft .Net programmers can use it to program for web sites. If you'd like to see it in action check out the Hard Rock Cafe Memorabilia page. I used Firefox to view the Silverlight sites that I have visited. It's worked flawlessly so far. Check it out for yourself, let me know what you think.

The Answer is...

A caller to the show had recently downloaded and installed Netscape 8x. He previously used 7x. The new version does not come with a built-in email client. I searched on the Netscape web site and could not find much information. I did find a few links to sites not affiliated with Netscape that did say that it is a Browser only in the 8x version. Link1 Link2 Link 3

Netscape is based off of Firefox. Given this fact I can't see any reason to download and install Netscape. From what I can tell it is more trouble than it's worth. First I don't want to come off as a Netscape hater or (god forbid) a Firefox Fanboy. I just think that there is no reason to download and install a browser that comes bundled with all of this extra stuff (Netscape ISP, McAfee, Rhapsody, Real Arcade and WeatherBug listed at the bottom of this page Link) I'm also not a big fan of anything that Real Player does. And I choose not use WeatherBug. Don't get me wrong they give you a choice. My choice is not to even mess with it.

Using FireFox and Thunderbird would be a great place to start in your search for a Netscape replacement. If you had a previous installation of Netscape, Thunderbird will import your contacts. Firefox can even import your Bookmarks. And without all the extra stuff.

Hope this clears things up a little bit.